AFM: How did you create the concept for Sound Wave? What was the original intention of it all?
Steve: The original intention was that I wanted to, I mean, there’s no secret. We’ve been doing parties for a long time. We are constantly coming up with new ideas and processes to throw different types of events. There’s no question that I wanted to throw a party at a water park. I want to throw a party at a lot of places, whenever I go somewhere I’m like, “how do we throw a party here.” How do we bring a lot of people in, how do we do something cool. Rather if it’s a party or fashion event, concert, a big DJ or something like that. So, I definitely approached the water park saying, “hey are you guys interested? I want to create something here.” It was a battle to get something going there for a while, because it’s not a normal thing that happens at a water park.
So as we progressed, we came up with this name and this idea, and the spot. We would run the water slides and do all of this stuff and have this great festival at a water park.
The first one rained-out, so nobody really got to use the water park. Well, it didn’t get rained out, it was raining, it was the coldest day of the year, but we still got 4,000 people. So that kind of gave me hope that that this thing could grow. From that point, we decided to do it again, and it grew to like 6,000 – 6,500 people. Then we decided, “let’s try it one more time,” and we got 10,000 people.
All that being said, looking at the way the event grew — sure it was great that it was at this water park and all of that — but the water slides were not heavily used. A few people used them over and over again, and that was about it. There were never hundreds of thousands of people using these water slides. We decided that it wasn’t the focal point.
When I went back to do the event again, there was another event coming to the market that was, too similar if you will, with what we were doing and we wanted to be exclusive.
When I do something I don’t want to be one of five festivals at a certain location. I want to do something that’s innovative and creative. When we brought Sound Wave to the market it was fresh and cool. So I said, “you know what? Sound Wave is a great brand, people know the name now, we have some of the biggest DJs in the world play, so now, let’s change it up a bit, still keeping the Sound Wave name.”
So, because The W and Maya have done some pretty cool events, have a great name, and are high-end and exclusive, we decided, “let’s get to the city, and see if we can close down the street that connects the two.”
We still have some water features (being the two pool clubs if you will). Maya has been bringing in some of the biggest DJs in the world. I mean the line-up at Maya since April rivals some of the biggest clubs in the country.
The thought process was simple, to not let any time pass, let’s get another Sound Wave going, let’s give the people what they want, and while we’re planning that next Sound Wave festival we can plan a more compact street party. It still has the water features and the fact that we had the line-up that we have available to us, was keeping us going.
I hear it everyday, people want these events. They want the biggest DJs. Tiesto hasn’t been here in almost five years. I’ve been working diligently throughout the past five years to bring him back. This was the opportunity. I could have just done a street party, or I could continue the brand.
In the meanwhile, Sound Wave is going to take many forms, we’re already planning different types of Sound Waves. We’re going to do a Sound Wave ‘Snow Edition,’ so we’ll take it up to a snow destination and do something that’s not out there yet. ‘Snow Edition’ is just the working name, but it will have a more creative name with it that continues with the Sound Wave brand. Then of course we will return Sound Wave to a larger water feature in the future. Sound Wave will take many shapes within the next few years.
